Archive for the ‘Current Affairs’ Category
Emerge through emergency
Thursday, April 12th, 2012The death of wisdom. Learning from experience is a faculty we fail to practice
Monday, January 30th, 2012
Bold statement. Usually not so true for positive deviants who have a tendency to suck the learning juices out of every experience.
Lets look at the facts. We no longer study history. Or those who do are kept in dusty corners of old Universities. How do I know this? There has been historical precedent to a collapsing economy, not just in the 1930’s but going back time and again from the beginning of time. There has been historical precedent for pretty much every version of war, going back to when man first sneezed. Even when we look at climate change, there is countless examples throughout history of humanity of the perils of treating nature and natural systems with disdain. Is any of the ‘expert’ voices out there referring to what history has taught us?
We do not have any eldership in our ‘modern’ day communities. Tell me how much wisdom has been passed down from your family elders in your life time? What have you learned from your grandparents, or even your parents? Where is the collective wisdom of our elders? Lost in a nursing home somewhere were we can’t ever find it. We think we are superior to our elders. That they know nothing because they didn’t have an iSomething, or connection to the internet. So we remove them from sight, and mind, failing to see the significant contribution they have to make. They know how to survive in hardship and depression, tools we may well need. What else can they teach us? What about how to grow old with dignity, how to make peace with death, how to read signs? (not the obvious ones) There is a beautiful movie, Bab’aziz, that has as its central story the gift of wisdom past from an old Sufi man to his granddaughter. What tragedy is the loss of this heritable wisdom in our culture.
We ignore wisdom of indigenous communities. We scoff in our arrogance, that they know nothing. But in their knowing nothing they survived and thrived for far longer than our little thrive moments which have been few and far between. How could anyone navigate across the vast Pacific Ocean in canoes without any instruments save for those supplied by nature? Stars, currents, wind, birds. Dumb luck, or some highly evolved navigation system that might offer us a few opportunities to learn from natural systems? What have they to teach us about paying attention to the instruments provided for freely by nature? Whole learning systems are literally dying as the elders die. Lost to us.
Our leaders of industry and politicians are far to wrapped up in the short term future to even lift a wisdom muscle that might involve considering the past. This is obvious.
But what about you? Do you take time to reflect, not just on your past, but on the past of your elders? History, ever given that a good look? Even simple reflection on the lessons you have learned from today, from your joys and pains, frustrations and humiliations? Do you use these as your school of daily wisdom?
As someone who occasionally delivers learning programs into organisations, I don’t need to see the studies on where real learning is gained. It always comes with experience. With getting our hands dirty, our hearts broken, our ego’s dented. Every day is an opportunity to learn. Even better if learning is facilitated through reflection, inquiry and some form of witnessing and reflecting back by another who holds the fullest expression of your truth as worth investing in. This is the work I mostly do that I love so. How valuable is this…better than a Harvard degree? Hell yeh. The school of the crucible of life.
Take a stand for your own wisdom. Cultivated over a lifetime, seeded by your ancestors, attended to daily. The world will thank you for it.
Tell me how you are cultivating your wisdom, or where you see communities learning from their elders in our ‘modern’ world.
SOPA, The Year of the Dragon, WWIII – Black Swans and no this is not what you think.
Monday, January 23rd, 2012
2012 will be the year of people. Regular people. Mothers, fathers, youth. Tax paying, hard working, making ends meet kind of people. People from wealthy countries, not so wealthy countries, black people, white people, gay and straight people. People will find their inner dragon.
It started loudly as the Arab Spring, and then it shifted to the USA and the Occupy movement. In Europe the fastest growing political group is the Pirate Party, started in Sweden, made up of mostly 18 to 30 year olds against online censorship. It will move at the speed of light, in totally unexpected ways. Because people are waking up to the power they always have held as a collective.
The politicians and power mongers are not reading the signs. Their hubris and arrogance is making them the blind. They forget that money does NOT buy everything. Never has, never will. The illusion is that money will buy votes, that money makes blind, mute, deaf slaves. But they have forgotten history. In their hubris and arrogance they have forgotten that people, the masses, us, do have a voice. We can say no. And when the workers of the system refuse to show up for work, the system breaks down. I am not speaking of unionism. And I am not a socialist. I am speaking of the power of people collectively protesting to no longer being slaves to a system that is being kept alive for the few. Of the travesty of greed and pride run rampant. Of the acceptance of evil as a normal day to day thing. Evil – like it being perfectly acceptable for some people to have all the gizzmo’s in the world made by hands of enslaved children. Or, evil like the rape and pillage of earth, making the local people’s environment toxic, and inhabitable.
Everyone knows that the system is broken. Broken. What people forget is the power they hold in their voice and action to stand up and speak.
I watched the great TED produced 13 minute video clip by Clay Shirky telling the truth about SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act). His final words where that even if SOPA was defeated, it would return.
The fight would not be over. Be prepared for the next round.
Now here is the truth.
If any version of SOPA clears the American legal system, we are looking at WWIII. Not the usual war with guns and military, but the turning of the rest of the Western world on the ‘mighty’ USA. And lets face it, the USA already has much of the non-Western world as enemies. I am not sure anything less than this type of global uprising of people will break the bubble of delusion that holds the USA in their own minds as this place that is an exception to the rest of the world. A place where they can get away with the very things they accuse other countries of. (Like electoral fraud, invading soverign nations covertly, rendition, war crimes…the list is long)
(To be clear, there are very wonderful, magnificent, brave people in the USA, people working their arses off to stop this kind of behaviour. I am speaking of the country as a whole… of the archetypal USA full blown in its shadow.)
When nations like Australia, New Zealand and countries in Europe, the usual allies of the USA, see their citizens arrested in their own country by the USA because of ‘their’ ‘copyright’ laws, then all the hell of Pandora’s box will be unleashed. When corporate USA thinks they can control the internet anywhere in the world, they better think again.
Like it or not, the internet belongs to no one country. And no one company, despite Googles efforts to change that. The internet is the defining invisible force of our next stage of humanities evolution. It is the boundless, freedom finding, liberating energetic network that transcends ownership. It has its shadow, as does all things. (Fraud, legitimate piracy, the ability to shred an innocent persons reputation in seconds, for example.) But for any country or company to attempt to ‘own it’ will create such wrath from the rest of the world.
There has been so much talk about 2012, about the Mayan calendar ending, about this time being the most important time in humanities history. Frankly I find this just a lot of distraction and noise, a place for people to focus their energy and make a shit load of money, continuing to encourage the type of fear that keeps people from thinking and seeking clearly.
History demonstrates that every single time in history has had moments of extreme crisis, where humanity reached a critical threshold. This is not the big one, it is simply another one. Can we stop the spin and get on with what needs to be done. We have too much work to do to spend any energy at all thinking this is the BIG time in humanity. All this does is continue to affirm our need to be ‘special’. This is a hollow egotistical need. It distracts us from our real purpose.
I suspect that what will knee-cap us will be the Black Swan. It will not be the usual suspects. Sure, the economy might fail. It has failed before and we survived. And god knows the financial system is in need of collapse in its current form. The EU might collapse and…people will survive. The Middle East might turn into a seething sess pool stirred on by the USA via Israel. Yep, this has been going on for the history of humanity. I am not glossing over the tragedy of all of these things that seem pretty certain to unfold.
Mother Nature will rise up and say enough, in her usual fashion, reducing humans to acknowledging that she has the kind of power that humbles us all. She is angry at being raped, pillaged, and treated with such flagrant disrespect. Her gizzards have been sucked dry, her skin scared and polluted, her oxygen poisoned. If she were one of our children we would be screaming foul to all four corners of the Universe.
But will anyone expect the world to turn on the USA? All of the world? I don’t think anyone sees that in the future. SOPA could do that. In an instant.
We are no longer working in linear time. The splitting of the atom changed all of that. We are moving at the speed of light, and at this speed institutions we thought impossible to fall can and will.
Interesting times, yes. We need wisdom (which won’t be found from our elected leaders), and is not something we have much of. We threw wisdom away when we made our elders elderly, and stopped learning from them. When we stopped being students of history, where the follies of man have been documented in one form of other for all of human time, and to which we have way too much arrogance to pay attention to.
The signs are all there. The cards have been played. Now it is up to us…how will we play our hand?
The perfect metaphor for this time is the lone man standing against the tank in Tiananmen Square. Each of us holds this potential, to stand up to. On this day, January 23rd 2012, the dawning of the year of the Chinese Water Dragon, we the people are called on to find our inner dragon. Lets hear the ROAR.
deScrooging Christmas, or any day..
Tuesday, December 13th, 2011
Don’t you love the experience of being gob smacked by people surprising the heck out of you in the best way?
Today I met with a long standing client who is a senior executive in a big Australian Corporate. He is on his 3 months long service leave, and was in my area, so we made time for a coffee.
This morning he spent a few hours at his friends business, a service station (or gas station for non Australian readers). What did he do? He gave free drive through service. You know, what we all used to get when we went to a service station to fill our cars with petrol? Someone to fill our tank, wash the windscreen, check oil, water, air.
He was greeted with everything from delight, to deep suspicion? What is this for? Who are you raising money for? How much will this cost? When people got over their suspicion, some where able to accept this gesture with gratitude and delight. Others still couldn’t quite accept that this was a gift.
There is so much to explore in this action.
*My clients motivation for doing this? B is a highly creative entrepreneur working in a very uncreative traditional business. He has been in the same company all his life. He truly does not accept or live within the ‘business as usual’ model. And he has managed to get away with this for years. Smart enough to know when to keep a low profile, and when to clash the cymbals and bang the drums. He constantly seeks expansion to his thinking and often in the ordinary, not the exceptional. This action was a way to do that. It was also a way to help a mate. And to be an observer of reactions to the unexpected from total strangers.
*The metaphor he now has for his leadership team is powerful. Where are you working the drive through service? Or…where is the drive through service opportunity? In a business that has a narrow margin of distinction from other similar businesses, drive through service moments are gold. (in ANY business, drive through service moments are Gold)
*Then there is the parallel of a senior executive happily and willingly ‘pumping gas’. How much character does this take? How much ego hurdling? How many of your executives would not only volunteer to do this, but actually craft the idea to do this on their holiday? What does that say about their leadership and character?
There is the response/reaction from the commuters, off to their busy pre Christmas work/life.
*How over saturated are we with being manipulated, coerced, conscripted into, seduced… that we regard with suspicion anything that on the surface looks too good to be true? Truly our over marketed hype has created a deep weariness in us. Warning to all marketers, people are yearning for authenticity in messages. The remarkable Seth Godin is an advocate for this.
*People who are clean and clear in advance with their agenda’s are a rare breed. This is a topic I cover in Speak the Truth, my free 23 page ebook. (If you haven’t seen it download it now, no strings, no email address required…just a simple download here.) To show up in all of our relationships with a clear and declared agenda is so powerful, so refreshing. It took my client a costume (Christmas hat) and many repeats of denial to any hidden agenda for people to trust his intentions. Really sad indictment on our society.
*For many people, this simple unexpected act at the start of their day would have set up their day…when people do unexpected deeply thoughtful gestures for us, our heart sings and that energy can carry us through all sorts of bumps. How do we possibly measure the value of these kinds of gestures on our health, our well being, our productivity, kindness to others, our ability to reciprocate? Such a small, inexpensive act, with very significant ripples. We never know the value of a smile, in the very right moment. It has changed lives. Yet where do we measure this in our economy, and our bottom line? And why don’t we consider this? Happiness is after all what most of us most want. Happiness and human connection.
*The tragedy of people so burnt by life that they cannot accept the gift. How far have we come from the gift economy (see my article on this) that we have become Scrooged. Fear, contraction, hopelessness, scarcity, distrust have become standard operating systems for our over consumed society.
There is a lot in this world that needs life support, blood transfusions, love and care. There is a lot of noise about collapse. Never doubt though that each of us can make a BIG difference.
We can begin with a heart felt smile and a genuine act of service to another. The cost is a bit of time and energy. The return, beyond measure.
Businesses can easily and affordably create drive through service experiences. To do so will put them in the class of exceptional service for their customers, a rare rare experience.
I bow to the mastery and inspiration of B. How lucky am I to work with such extraordinary people.
And to all of you reading this…where is your drive though? Can’t see it?…Hint…it is right in front of you with the very next person you speak to. At the least, smile…
..the dance between evolution and equilibrium..
Monday, November 7th, 2011
The Certainty of Globalisation and the Science of Dynamic Equilibrium
or…the dance between evolution and equilibrium.
The often over used word, equilibrium, is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as “any condition in which all acting influences are cancelled by others resulting in a stable, balanced, or unchanging system.”
Equilibrium is not inactivity, but rather dynamic balance. The balance can be in the domains of physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual. Life is filled with fluctuations towards and away from equilibrium.
Nature exhibits an intrinsic drive towards equilibrium. The front door of your home is opened in mid winter and cold air rushes into the warm interior. Very quickly though, the imbalance disappears and the air temperature throughout the room stabilises. It has never been observed that one side of the room gets colder while the other side gets hotter, for no apparent reason. Just as gas molecules in a small container disperse throughout a larger container in ways that give each gas molecule equal space. You will not find gas molecules gathering in one corner of a container.
Greater forces overpower smaller forces. A too heavy object sitting on a too weakly constructed shelf will eventually fall through, and may come to rest on the floor, if the floor is strong enough. At the atomic level, the constant move to equilibrium continues, even when the overt appearance is of an object at rest.
Nature seeks equilibrium spontaneously, as nature is always most efficient and economical.
So, what has all of this to do with globlisation?
For most of the history of humanity we have lived as nation states, pockets of humanity, similar to the gas molecules in a small glass jar. Within our own ‘jar’ we have found our dynamic equilibrium. However, we have also been pulled by evolutions arrow in a constant quest to evolve.
This is the dance between equilibrium and evolution, and it has gone on for all of life as we know it, and will continue, long after you are I are dust.
Over the last 50 plus years, as borders have become more fluid, and systems such as money, trade, and energy have become less border dependent, our ‘jar’ has become bigger.
As I wrote in the article, Eventually we all pay, when I lose my manufacturing job in a wealthy nation state to cheaper labor in a developing country, I may suffer loss while someone else gets pulled out of poverty.
The world is in the middle of a significant process of dynamic equilibrium. We have one part of the room(world) that is cold, and another that is hot. This is not a permanent situation. Indeed we have been through many of these movements to dynamic equilibrium already, and will continue, probably at an accelerated rate, as Universe evolves. The big difference now is that for the first time we are dealing with the whole world, and not just little communities.
Our ‘jar’ full of gasses is indeed the world. Pollution in China affects the fisherman in Tuvalu. Low wages over ‘there’, mean someone loses over ‘here’. It is how things go when dynamic equilibrium is in process. At some point, in the near future, world wide wages will balance out. There will be no ‘cheap’ wages to be found, which will require a different model than the one we have.
Then there will be other areas/factors that will fall out of equilibrium. Because this is the way nature works, especially when man gets his hands on things without being mindful of the precessional effects. This constant dance.. evolution.. equilibrium.. evolution.. equilibrium….
We are losing species, but while species die, (and possibly humans too), other species flourish. The earth and nature will do just fine in the whole…equilibrium will find its space, in the end. Until another evolutionary event comes along…and then the dance will resume.
The point is that we have to start seeing the world as a whole. We can no longer afford the luxury or indulgence of living in our little glass ‘jar’. And in this whole view, we need to recognise that we are in the process of finding equilibrium within globalisation. Don’t get too comfortable though, because evolutions arrow will find a new target.
Globalisation is in process, whether we like it or not. The real questions lie in how wisely we can support the process of dynamic equilibrium at all levels, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually.
Let me know your thoughts….
Eventually we all pay
Monday, October 31st, 2011
Here in Australia we just had Qantas shut down for nearly 2 days, stranding thousands of people around the world. If you scratch below the surface of this action and zero in on the source of why the executive team decided to do this, it reveals the cost of a world in the middle of a transition to globalisation.
Complexity can never be looked at through a simple lens. As Bucky Fuller said, we have to start with the whole (synergy). Sure, if I were a passenger stranded in some place, with a limited time to get to a very important event, or to start my holiday that I have saved for for years, I would be seriously pissed off. And if I were a worker, imminently facing the loss of my job to cheaper labour overseas, I would be frightened.
But we simply cannot point a finger of blame while at the same time enjoying the fruits of the cost of this. Globalisation means jobs are off-shored. I get to buy my electronic gizzmo’s for a much cheaper price. Lovely. I get cheaper travel with airlines that have cheaper labour. Lovely. But at what price? And when do I ask that question? As I am paying for my next exciting techno gadget? Or when my whole livelihood is threatened? For as surely as my job may be under threat, somewhere in the world other families are celebrating their success in getting the very job we have lost. Just as blue green algae is celebrating a world with more CO2.
I am actually a fan of globalisation. It is a tide coming in that has its own momentum. To try to fight it is futile. Same as trying to fight the advent of the car. Sucks if you made your livelihood from horse buggies. (I do think we could transition to globalisation in a much smarter way than we are doing it now, by the way.)
The incident with Qantas is just another little signal in a sea of signals that change is moving faster and faster. The ability to adapt to change is ever increasingly becoming a skill of high value. Do you have this skill? Or are you the one resisting, being dragged kicking and screaming?
We cannot rape the earth of its millions-of-years-to-develop oil and gas, and not expect to pay. We cannot reach 7 billion people on the planet and not expect to pay. We cannot live lifestyles of obscene waste and not expect to pay. We cannot buy our clothes and toys cheaply from China and India and not expect to pay.
The question is, when will we pay? Or who will pay, and when? Qantas is a signal that its current workers are being asked to pay now. Today, or, in a few months or short years…they will still pay. No matter when, they will pay and they will not like it. Our dislike of things like a carbon tax is just about our reluctance to pay now. For somewhere down the track, soon, someone will pay. Will it be us, or our kids? Or both?
The tab will be tallied. This is unavoidable. Who pays and when, this we are bickering about. But make no mistake, it is simply a delusional delay.
Until we start to incorporate a different accounting methodology (integral accounting) that takes into consideration the all-in-cost of what we do, we are living in the delusion that we can get away with our many years of blindness, or sheer willful ignorance.
Part of globalisation at the spiritual level (now manifesting at the physical level) is the ever dawning realisation that we are all one. Truly I cannot do anything in my little isolated world and not deny the consequences. We no longer have that luxury. The people in the Maldives are paying for us now. As are the people in Tuvalu, and Bangladesh. The Amazon…the list is long….and painful. Animals…species, extinction…and yes, some of us privileged westerners are starting to pay. The confluence of the GFC and climate change, our health system, over population, all of these things are now showing up in a perfect storm that will effect all of us, even the 1%. In different ways, for sure. But there is no ‘there’ we can run away to. My air is your air. My sea is your sea. A virus is spread in the same air and water…
Getting fit and eating healthy food after years of indulgence hurts, in the short term. Few people enjoy that initial transition. But most people who stick with it, actually discover a vitality they had not even realised they had lost. To choose consciously to pay the all-in-price for everything we do will hurt, big time. Big changes in lifestyle will need to be made. We all know this, at some level, and are seeking to delay the arrival time for as long as we can. I propose that on the other side, when we are living with full consciousness of ‘we are all one’, then we will discover a vitality and humanity that we have long forgotten.
In the current movie, “In Time” there is a quote, repeated several times, that for a few to be immortal, many must die. Will, the character played by Justin Timberlake, has a response. “No one should be immortal if even one person has to die.” Idealistic, sure. But anything less reduces us to the lizards that we have evolved from.
Your thoughts?
On Integrity
Tuesday, September 27th, 2011
Integrity…I would have thought that to live in integrity was not that hard a gig. Seems I am wrong. Seems that integrity is the toughest gig in town. Not only that, but that it is rare. It demands of you your best. And more. It demands of you that you say no to a lot of yummy things, and yes to some of the really hard stuff. It comes at a price. Most people don’t pay.
What is integrity? To me it means wholeness. Completeness. I first ‘got’ integrity when I was working with building Bucky Fuller’s models. Take a bunch of toothpicks, and some jelly babies, and build a square. Notice when you do that the square cannot stay upright on its own. It collapses. Yet we have built our maths and architecture around squares. Now build a triangle. Something feels good about a triangle. But it has no dimensionality. So add one extra point and create a tetrahedron. Bingo…now you have a thing that holds its shape. It has complete integrity. It has an inside and an outside, which means that it is a system. Actually, it is the minimum system in Universe.
A complex system, like a human being, has integrity when it is holding its shape. When it is doing what it was designed to do. When it is complete. Given the changing state of the larger ecosystem in which we find ourselves, to do this requires extreme attention. It means that our intention matches our words, matches our actions, matches the effects our words and actions have. The signal is clear, from source to delivery to destination. There is no dissonance, no misalignment, no fracturing, no distortion. Yep, I did say this integrity thing was hard.
It has to start with source. The source of our signal. What is that? Most of the time we get distracted with the signal itself. Like an amazing light show, the brightness takes our attention away from the source. We have become signal responding creatures, rarely focusing on source. We take a pain killer for a headache, eat too much to hide our guilt or shame, react to things without taking the time to focus on what is really going on. Jump to conclusions, make assumptions. Accumulate yuk because we do not speak up sooner. Or get distracted by the bright shiny object before we really know about from where the bright shiny object came.
How many times have you had the experience of getting riled up, jumped to conclusions, only to find that you were missing a significant piece of the information, and that when you had that information, the view changed so significantly that your reaction was ill conceived? Hmm..let me name 30% of the waste in human productivity spent in this type of conversation. Let me name my own getting trapped in this way too many times. It is a nauseating place to be, and yet for some dark reason, us humans find it attractive. That smelly, icky gossipy place. It always does harm. Subtly or overtly. This is why the conversation for understanding is so important.
How does it feel to be on the receiving end of another person’s neglect of going to the source of your actions? Of jumping to conclusions, making assumptions, blaming or shaming without having the relevant whole? Or of being completely negated and discarded after weeks, months, or years of attention, focus and applied energy being put into something that deeply mattered to you because the other party did not take the time to go to source, to see the whole, to honour your history, your effort, your dedication?
Bucky said that the necessary ingredient of synergy is to start first with the whole. With the Universe. That until we have the complete picture, we have only a partial and therefore incomplete view. Our legal system is supposed to be built around this…innocent until proven guilty. But do we live by this?
Have you ever felt devalued? Discarded as a human of value? I have. Many times. It feels horrible. The question is…how many times have I done this to others? And this is a question I am sitting in now. As someone who has built my brand around integrity, I have known that the price of so doing would be high. That this conscious choice would open me to be held to account at a level most uncomfortable. That I would have to demand of myself the kind of personal reflection rigor that few stomach. That I would have to stand in the heat of others who see me in my shadow. And own it all. All. Yep…this stuff is hard.
So I circle back…..what is the source of your signal? What is the intent you project in the world? And what comes back at you that indicates the truth of the projection? Is it aligned? Where is the dissonance? For this is our feedback. Like it or not.
Do your words really match your intention? Do your actions? Or do you say one thing and do another? How do you cheat on yourself and your own integrity?
And are you really game enough to surround yourself with people who will hold you to your highest expression of integrity, your most magnificent wholeness? These are your true support team. The ones who will not step over anything ever, but will bravely and respectfully point out when you have strayed from your own wholeness. Ideally they will do this from a place of deep care for you. Sometimes they will not. Sometimes it will be the total stranger who will shock you from your own treachery. Hard medicine, but a gift none the less.
Integrity is a tough gig. The toughest. Which is why it is so important.
To declare my current focus in living in integrity, my commitment is to work at going to source before I get into reaction, make judgements or jump to conclusions. To have the whole view rather than work from the partial. I am up to being held to account around this….if you notice me stray.
What is yours? Want to play…?
Of gifts and dignity, the antithesis of starving in our obesity
Monday, August 8th, 2011
The mythology of a market society reverses the picture of gift society. In a market society…Getting rather than giving is the mark of a substantiative person, and the hero is the ‘self-possessed’ ‘self-made’. So long as these assumptions rule, a disquieting sense of triviality, of worthlessness even, will nag the man or woman who labors in the service of a gift and whose products are not adequately described as commodities. Where we reckon our substance by our acquisitions, the gifts of the gifted man are powerless to make him substantial. Lewis Hyde, The Gift.
In the opening stages of the Financial Literacy workshop in Berkeley in July 2011, David Martin started with bringing mindfulness to the very ground we stood on. In the very early days of white mans occupation of what is now known as Berkeley, thousands of men were brought from China as cheap labor, to work the gold mines and the building of the railroad. It was slave labor. What they were offered and what they got was vastly different. These men were reduced to mere commodities. We honoured them, and the pain they suffered. We honoured them for the lies they were told.
It was a very profound way to start a journey into the heart and spirit of our current financial system.
I felt their pain. I know well what it is like to be dishonoured in your humanity. To be trivialised. To have your work reduced to a number on a balance sheet. I know what it is like to spend days and years knowing that your unique brand of service does not match the commodification of the market. Of what price is it? How can we charge for this? I know well what it is like to have others dim your light because it does not fit the market model. For many years I thought it was because I lacked intelligence. I was missing the money making gene. Or something like that.
But no. There was no gene missing. I was trying to make my gifts sing in a market that did not have a mechanism to value them. My heart goes out to every person who has a gift, and has spent years nourishing that gift, and years in the struggle of having their gift be seen as worthless. Not because it is worthless, but because a market cannot find a way to put a price tag on it and make it to ’scale’. Or, because something deep in you knows that to commodify everything reduces us, divides us, and keeps us divided.
I know I do not speak to an empty room when I speak of this pain. I do not speak to an empty room when I speak of the distance we find ourselves from the blessing that comes with gifts and gifting. There is a rising human hunger for true exchange. Where I get to know the giver of the gift, and they get to know me. Where the spirit of the gift starts to live beyond itself.
By its own design, the exchange of money for something is devoid of humanity. Once the exchange is done, the deal is complete. No relationship required. Just a transaction. Sometimes this is fine. But if it was all that we did life becomes increasingly barren. We isolate ourselves by our very mechanism of exchange.
And behind all of this is the getting…more…and more…and this, this alone, is the measure of the success of us. More stuff, more money, more fame, more press, more…more…more. Getting. And getting. And not just getting, but keeping. Removing from circulation. Hoarding. Anything contained within a boundary must contain as well its own exhaustion.
What is given away feeds again and again, but what is kept feeds only once an leaves us hungry. We are starving to death. Or starving in our obesity. As many are truly starving, not for lack of food.
I feel the yearning in people from around the world, the deep yearning for connection to our own gift, for honouring of the gifts we have to share, for a way to have our gifts be valued that nourish us on every level.
The noise that is screaming loudly in the current global economic market place is the death screams of a system that is devoid of the very humanness we so long for.
Let us rise from these hollow ashes and engage in a way that honours all of our gifts and releases all people from slavery and hunger, be it of food or soul.
The good news is that we do not have to wait another moment. The path is already there. I invite you to join those who are walking the path.
Financial literacy, new friends, abundance as a way of being
Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011
In the history of the world it is often the seemingly small events that have the power to make the most significant changes. Rosa Parks refusing to sit at the back of the bus. Mohamed Bouazizi, who’s personal sacrifice sparked an uprising across the Middle East.
In my world, the small but significant event took place July 22 to 24, 2011 in Berkeley California, where a group of about 20 magnificent people gathered to give birth to a project I have been working on for some 25 years. These great people found themselves in a deep exploration of financial literacy. Not the type of financial literacy you will find at business school. Or in the economics department. We stepped into the conversation, guided by the insight of David Martin, looking to bring truth to the very core animating impulse behind our current global financial system. What was the intent of design? How did the intent become manifest? What does this mean to humanity? What can we do to repurpose this system, allowing a different outcome to the one we are currently observing around the world. (Massive personal and sovereign debt, an ever increasing gap between the wealthy and the poor, global hunger and starvation, gut wrenching poverty for the majority of citizens on spaceship earth.)
Through this extraordinary process over three days, our Universe was tilted. Even without being able to fully get the language, as one participant said, “I am able to deeply get that this is truth.”
This journey began for me when I was 26 years old and, as an ambitious young entrepreneur, I wanted to understand how to make money. So off I went to a class called Money and You. Still running to this day, this program, designed by the great Werner Erhard, tipped me completely onto a path of self discovery and development. More than that, it also introduced me to the work of R. Buckminster Fuller, one of my life long beloved teachers.
As I am now approaching my 51st birthday, I have, as the richness of age gives you, the opportunity to look back at life and see the threads, that no matter what, have remained consistent, through every up and down and in and out of my life.
Those threads have been..
*Integrity
*A forensic quest for truth
*As part of this quest for truth, a deep desire to understand the very systems that form the foundations of our current life, and in particular, our economic/value exchange system.
As I have written before, life doesn’t turn out how you expect it. I neither expected to be a mother, and a single one at that, or to have spent the majority of my life single. I also never expected that I would have a personal struggle with finances and money.
But such is as it is. I have half written another article, “If I were God” where I posit that to reach this place in my life right now, where my commitment is to bringing light to the current system in a way that emancipates people worldwide, I needed to go through every single one of the days of my life, exactly as they have been, to this very point. All the fear, the pain, the confusion, the struggle, the effort. All of it.
Indeed, the perfection of the path is as exquisite as it has been painful.
For many years these seeds were growing in me. Then in 2006, during one week in October while traveling in the USA, I had the good fortune (or was it more auspicious than that?) to meet Bernard Lietaer and to hear a talk given by David Martin. Bernard, a world renowned economist, and an expert in complimentary currencies, demonstrated the power of a currency to change the world from short term to long term thinking in a heart beat. David Martin, with precision and an almost detached clarity, walked through the exact events that lead to what we now know as the Global Financial Crisis.
From this week I was seized with a deep truth. I knew nothing about the very system that underpins everything we do. I was deeply unconscious. And as someone who is committed to consciousness and forensic truth, this was no longer viable. So my quest went from vague to 80% committed. The reading began. Economics books. Articles. From mind numbingly boring to deeply riveting.
Two years ago, August 28th, I met David Martin in a skype call, specifically to propose to him that we co-create a financial literacy workshop. In his wisdom, David challenged me to consider the field effects of creating such a workshop. We also started working together as partners in The Constellation. Earlier this year my commitment shifted to 100% and I commenced a deep dialogue with two of David’s staff about the deep energetics of this workshop. This was a critical component. When you are working with such emotional material, material that people are so heavily invested in, the level of clarity around your purpose is crucial. I had to clear away any residue of my own dogma, my own stuckness, my own agenda.
In early July, with a few weeks notice, we decided to put a stake in the sand and invite family and friends to the very early first draft of this workshop.
Several people who showed up on day 1 did not come back. The truth might set you free, but first it can piss people off. Or, when people have so much invested in the current system, the very thought of having to face their collusion with it, and their desire to maintain the status quo, becomes too frightening to contemplate. Or whatever the reason.
While we did cover distinctions around money, debt, credit, public and private equity, the federal reserve banking system, bonds, insurance, productivity, utility, etc, what we really engaged with was the core animating impulse behind all of these. I have know intuitively for most of my life that our system is perverse. That at its core it is a corruption, specifically designed to enslave and dehumanize value for all but the minority.
I have also spent years berating myself on my ‘lack’ of intelligence to ‘work’ the system. In truth, there has been many times when I had opportunities to do just that. To turn left and take the money, when my gut and my own truth said no. I am beginning to see that my ‘lack’ of intelligence was indeed the opposite.
When we started on day one of the workshop with an honouring of all the people who have suffered through enslavement, poverty, death and loss of dignity as a direct manifestation of our current system, I felt their pain. Not as some isolated observer, but as my own pain. I know the feeling of being marginalised. I know the feeling of being made to feel less than. I know what being devalued means. I am that person.
And, the truth of all truths, I am currently enslaved. I am a slave. I have debt.
This statement takes a moment to digest. Most of us are enslaved. Many of us have been dehumanized over and over. And while we might live in extreme wealth compared to many people in the world, our wealth enslaves us. It is designed to do this.
From anchoring in deep truths, those kind of truths that turn a healthy set of brains into scrambled eggs, we did move into an inspired place as a launching pad to move back into full engagement with the world. We explored integral accounting, abundance, and the power of community. How, without changing the existing system, people can re-purpose the current structure to invite a different engagement. Now. Today.
I observed three of the most magnificent women commit their heart, soul, mind and body to this work. I sat in the experience of feeling an unbreakable vow from others. Such a rare phenomenon. Rare, rare, rare. I had people step up to support me totally. Wow. (Breathe Christine. Receiving support has not been easy for me.)
It was an incredible three days. It is only the beginning. During last night, it became clear to me that my immediate next step is to write articles about the key pieces. Money, debt, etc..to this endeavor I will be commencing immediately. Simultaneously, we have a team of magnificent people committed to bringing this work to the world. I know that there are people who are hungering for it.
Please let me know if you are one of them.
(A special and deep bow to every single person on this journey through my entire life. Particularly, David Martin, and the people in the room in Berkeley. And to Dori, Nirvana and Elizabeth, for demonstrating such generosity, grace and commitment.)
Who’s to Blame? Hmm–let’s start with the man in the mirror.
Thursday, June 30th, 2011
How did we get to this place? The place where the first response to anything we don’t like is to find someone or something to blame? Our complete abdication of any form of responsibility makes me sick to the stomach.
The co-valent pair of blame is victim hood. The moment I blame anyone or anything I immediately reduce myself to becoming a victim. One does not go without the other. (And yes, let me be clear there are very legitimate victims in the world. People who have suffered terrible transgressions because of other people’s greed and stupidity. I am not talking about those people in this article. Interestingly, many of these people do not behave like ‘victims’. They often don’t live in blame.) I am talking about the guy who gets his jaw broken in a drunken bar room brawl and wants to put all the blame on the guy who drunkenly hit him. I guess he could have been standing off to the side in complete innocence, minding his own business and some random guy came up and hit him. That might have happened. But it probably didn’t. I would guess that he was doing some form of provoking. Is he willing to take any measure of responsibility? Or is it all about blaming the other guy? And getting the pay-out? Will money ease his pain? Or is it vengeance he is after? When has vengeance ever healed someone of anything? Oh, I forgot, we have had thousands of years of observing how vengeance begets vengeance and still we think it is a strategy that works. Ahh.well….no…it might ‘feel’ sweet, for a moment of time, but the scorpions tail of vengeance has a vicious bite and the poison lasts a lifetime, or more.
Or the person who dives into a shallow canal and becomes paralysed. Blame goes to the land owner for not having a sign up saying “shallow water” Tragic accident, but really, do we have to have signs everywhere to protect ourselves from being sued? Apparently so. How about the fool who dived into the water in the first place taking responsibility for doing so? No, he had nothing to do with it it. So we now spend millions on protection and insurance. And the circle goes around. And around. The lawyers win, big time by being paid. But everyone loses when we add all the costs together. Our communities, our well-being, our bank accounts…all suffer.
Please don’t complain about rising insurance premiums if you also think it is OK for people to sue for tripping on a pavement and breaking a bone.
We are all in the blame game. Playing small or large. The moment I participate in any form of blame I reduce myself to a victim. In doing so I become disempowered. Sometimes this is a very subtle game. Let me share a personal example. The “I don’t know what to do?” question. This is a form of the victim/blame game. I want to abdicate my responsibility to someone else so I don’t have to make a decision. (Or I want to abdicate my responsibility to no decision at all, which is equally as disempowering, and often I end up blaming me.) By doing this, I am off the hook, and if all goes pear shaped, I have someone else to blame. We all do this all the time. We abdicate our choices to ‘experts’, and people that we deem have more authority than we do. And then when our ‘experts’ fail to deliver, we go right into blame and complain. And we want vengeance? For what? For not having the backbone to make a choice? Or to be responsible for the choices we have made?
How did we get this way? How did we become so addicted to victim hood? Please show me a single victim of this nature who is also happy, and in their own power? It is not a happy, empowered place to be.
How did we get to a place where abdicating any form of responsibility is normal operations?
Part of the answer to this question is that it is designed into our operating system. We have limited liability companies as the backbone of our industry. Have we stopped to ask, why limit liability? A corporation has the rights of a human without any of the responsibilities. (Indeed I am asking if humans have many responsibilities these days? Our blame epidemic is so out of control.) If you are serious about standing to full account, about being sovereign of your own choices, then you are also willing to take responsibility. This means that by inviting the very energetics of limited liability into your work you are colluding with the very system you might be trying to transcend.
Part of the answer is that we don’t want to take responsibility. This is the realm of the healthy adult. We want to stay in our child and be ‘cared for’ by the government, or the system, or the…? We want to stay helpless and small. We fear our own power. And we like to throw tantrums and demand this and that because we ‘deserve’ it. I ask please that you remove the word deserve from your vocabulary right now. It marries with entitlement, which is an epidemic of our society. I am entitled to…I deserve it? And the other person doesn’t? A more subtle form of vengeance.
It is far easier to point the finger than to look in the mirror. Not much heavy lifting to be done to point the finger. There is a high price, apart from rising insurance premiums. The price is our own vitality, happiness, self-esteem, sovereignty. Looking in the mirror and owning our responsibility is hard. And brave. And it is the only place I know where true freedom lives.
I am responsible for my choices. And yes, I get to choose. Accidents do happen. People make real mistakes. Bad things happen to good and bad people. Always, always, I have a choice in how I respond. No one or no thing can take away that choice as long as I am breathing air on my own. I am sovereign to my choices, to my responses to what life deals me. This is true freedom.
And why do people get away with blame and victim hood in our lives? Because we let them. Because we say that is OK? Funny that, responsibility starts with the man in the mirror. Hmm…that would be me. And you.
Where does blame live in your life? What are you doing to unstick the tentacles of blame from your world? Please share…
